Chapter 33
The Great Depression
and the New Deal
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
Roosevelt was America’s most active
First Lady and commanded enormous
popularity and influence during FDR’s
presidency. Here she emerges, miner’s
cap in hand, from an Ohio coal mine.
The Vanquished and the Victor
A dour Hoover and an ebullient
Roosevelt ride to the inauguration
ceremonies on March 4, 1933. This
magazine cover was never published,
presumably because of the editors’
sensitivity about the attempted
assassination of Roosevelt when he
was riding in an open car in Florida on
February 15, 1933, less than three
weeks earlier. The attempt on
Roosevelt’s life ended in the death of
Chicago mayor Anton J. Cermak.
Unemployed and Frustrated
Democratic candidate Franklin
Roosevelt offered hope, if few concrete
plans, to the millions struggling to cope
with the Great Depression.
The Champ: FDR Chatting with Reporters
Roosevelt mastered the press as few presidents before or since have been able to do.
He was also ingenious in finding opportunities to converse with reporters in situations
where he could conceal his physical limitations.
Bank Failures Before and After
the Glass-Steagall Banking
Reform Act of 1933
CCC Workers in Alaska, 1939
These Tlingit carvers in Alaska’s
southeastern panhandle were part of a
CCC project to restore totem poles.
Here they stand with a pole carved in
the likeness of Abraham Lincoln.
Huey Long (1893–1935)
Long pursued progressive policies as governor of Louisiana, even while he ruled the state with a
dictatorial hand. A flamboyant and unpredictable populist, he set the orthodox political establishment
on its ear, especially after he became a U.S. senator in 1930. Long’s admirers called him the
“Kingfish”; Franklin Roosevelt called him “one of the two most dangerous men in the country.” (The
other, said Roosevelt, was General Douglas MacArthur.)
WPA Mural, by Victor Arnautoff (1896–1979), 1934
The Pedestrian Scene, painted on a wall of Coit Tower in San Francisco, was one of a
series of murals commissioned by the federal government to employ artists during the
Great Depression.
Frances Perkins (1880–1965) at the Site of the Golden Gate Bridge
Project, 1935
The first woman cabinet member, Perkins served as secretary of labor under
Roosevelt. She was subjected to much undeserved criticism from male businessmen,
laborites, and politicians. They sneered that FDR “kept her in labor” for many years.
Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–
1955)
The daughter of ex-slaves and founder
of a college in Florida, Bethune became
the highest-ranking African American in
the Roosevelt administration when she
was appointed director of the Office of
Minority Affairs in the National Youth
Administration (NYA). From this base
she organized the “Black Cabinet” to
make sure blacks benefited from the
New Deal programs along with whites.
Here she is picketing against
segregated hiring practices at the
Peoples Drug Store chain, one of the
earliest targets of the black civil rights
movement.
Grand Coulee Dam Under
Construction on the Columbia
River, 1939
Located in central Washington State,
the Grand Coulee Dam was one of the
most ambitious projects of the New
Deal’s Public Works Administration. It is
the largest concrete structure in the
United States and the central facility in
the Columbia Basin Project, which
generates electricity for the Pacific
Northwest and provides irrigation for
half a million acres of Columbia Valley
farmland—services that have
transformed the life of the region.
An Okie Family Hits the Road in
the 1930s to Escape the Dust
Bowl
The Extent of Erosion in the 1930s
Note the extensive wind erosion in the western Oklahoma panhandle region, which was dubbed the
“Dust Bowl” in the 1930s. Mechanized farmers had “busted” the sod of the southern plains so
thoroughly that they literally broke the back of the land. Tons of dust blew out of the Dust Bowl in the
1930s and blotted the sun from the skies as far away as New York. A Kansas newspaperman
reported in 1935 that in his dust-darkened town, “Lady Godiva could ride through streets without
even the horse seeing her.”
TVA Area
More than twenty dams were constructed on the river’s tributaries as part of a massive
project to control flooding, generate hydroelectric power, and revitalize the Tennessee
Valley region, while also creating jobs for the unemployed. The shaded area represents
the area served by TVA electric power.
Occupied Households with Electric Service, 1900–2008
The Tennessee Valley Authority contributed to making electricity available to almost all
Americans by 1960. African American leader Andrew Young later claimed that the TVA
created the economic underpinnings of the civil rights movement: “It was the presence
of the cheap electricity, lower interest rates, water projects, that laid the foundation for
the New South.”
John L. Lewis (1880–1969)
Inciting Textile Workers to
Strike, 1937
A miner, Lewis worked his way up to the
presidency of the United Mine Workers
of America. He then founded the
Committee for Industrial Organization,
later reconstituted as the Congress of
Industrial Organizations, in the mid1930s to unite all industrial workers in a
powerful bloc of “big labor” to stand up
to “big business.”
General Motors Sit-down Strikers, Flint, Michigan, 1937
Strikers like these sometimes kept their spirits up with the song “Sit Down”:
When the boss won’t talk
Don’t take a walk;
Sit down, sit down.
Labor Triumphant
After generations of struggle, organized
labor made dramatic gains in
membership and bargaining power
during the New Deal years.
Labor Union Membership in Selected Countries, 1913–2001
In the United States, the percentage of the total labor force that was unionized increased until 1954, when it began to
decline. In the 1990s it had a brief rise with the organization of service and government workers, only to decline again
until it reached a low of 12 percent in 2006. In 2007 unionized workers grew by .1 percent, an increase of 311,000
workers, which brought total union membership to 15.7 million, the highest in many years. Note the very different
fortunes of organized labor in other countries in the face of the Great Depression, World War II, postwar prosperity,
and deindustrialization.
Source: From James C. Docherty, Historical Dictionary of Organized Labor, 2nd ed., pp. 408–415 and
420–421. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by permission of Scavenger Press, Lanham, MD.
The Response to Roosevelt’s “Court-Packing” Plan, 1937
Even the Democratic donkey kicked up a storm in opposition to President Roosevelt’s
plan to expand the Supreme Court to as many as fifteen judges.
Economic Impact of the Great Depression on the United States, the
United Kingdom, and Germany, 1929–1940
1Federal
Emergency Relief Administration workers are counted as employed.
shows registered unemployment in Germany in 1929; industrial unemployment, as reported
by unions, was 13.1 percent.
3Unemployment ceased to be an issue in Germany by 1939 with the mobilization for war…
2Figure
[Sources: United States Historical Statistics, vol. 2; Statistical Yearbook of the League of Nations (1938–1939 and 1941–1942);
International Historical Statistics, 1750–2005: Europe; State, Economy, and Society in Western Europe, 1815–1975, vol. 2.]
Economic Impact of the Great Depression on the United States, the
United Kingdom, and Germany, 1929–1940
1Federal
Emergency Relief Administration workers are counted as employed.
shows registered unemployment in Germany in 1929; industrial unemployment, as reported
by unions, was 13.1 percent.
3Unemployment ceased to be an issue in Germany by 1939 with the mobilization for war…
2Figure
[Sources: United States Historical Statistics, vol. 2; Statistical Yearbook of the League of Nations (1938–1939 and 1941–1942);
International Historical Statistics, 1750–2005: Europe; State, Economy, and Society in Western Europe, 1815–1975, vol. 2.]
Employment Agency, by Isaac Soyer, 1937
Millions of jobless Americans felt the despair Soyer captured in this painting, as
depression-era unemployment reached levels never seen before or since in American
history.
Our Skipper
This pro-FDR cartoon depicts a confident Roosevelt ignoring his critics while heading
cheerily toward economic recovery. In fact, FDR’s New Deal brought neither the
recovery he promised nor the ruin his detractors prophesied. The depression dragged
on with only periodic improvement for nearly eight years under his leadership, until the
cataclysmic emergency of World War II finally banished unemployment from the land.